A federal judge has blocked a section of a controversial Arizona immigration law that empowered local police to check the immigration status of suspects they detain for other offenses, and also a requirement that immigrants carry identification papers at all times.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, considering several challenges to the polarizing state law — including a lawsuit filed by the Obama administration — left other sections in place, according to the New York Times. It is supposed to take effect Thursday.

Lawyers for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer are expected to appeal the ruling on a law that raised a furor across the country among both those favoring a crackdown on illegal immigration and others who believed the law was a violation of civil liberties and would lead to racial profiling of Hispanics .

The preliminary ruling by Judge Susan R. Bolton of the U.S. District Court in Arizona enjoins the meatiest parts of the bill, putting their enactment on hold while the issue is slugged out in the courts.

The court blocked sections of SB1070 that would: require police to make “reasonable attempts” to determine the immigration status of persons stopped under suspicion of a crime; authorize police to arrest persons under probable cause that they have committed infractions that could lead to deportation; make it a crime for aliens not to carry immigration papers; make it a crime for an illegal aliens to apply for work.

The parts of the bill not enjoined by the ruling include fairly anodyne provisions that make it easier for Arizona citizens and officials to help enforce federal immigration law, along with amendments to criminal statutes dealing with a number of other immigration-related crimes.

A temporary injunction gets put into place when a judge thinks that a court review has some likelihood of overturning a law in a full hearing. That doesn’t amount to a decision on the merits, but it does indicate that Bolton thinks the Department of Justice can make a case for blocking the law.

What will be interesting will be to see whether this impacts public opinion. The Obama administration has taken a beating in the polls on this issue, with poll after poll showing majorities of Americans supporting the Arizona law. A temporary injunction on portions of the bill may get some people rethinking the issue, but I’d be surprised if there was any substantial movement. If a judge later rules against the law after a full hearing, it might change feelings about the law specifically, but probably not about enforcement.

I’d also expect the White House to claim this as vindication, but only because they have been utterly tone-deaf on this issue for the last three months. They should wait on the I-told-you-so for the full hearing.

It’s no surprise that key parts of the Arizona immigration law were just suspended by Judge Bolton, pending the full trial. Assuming the state doesn’t give up, which it won’t, everyone understood this would take several years and reach the Supreme Court. It’s a stupid way to make policy, but with ACLU lawyers (both those inside and those outside the government) fanatically committed to open borders, there’s no alternative.

The decision has to be viewed as a near complete victory for opponents of the law, as it restricts the state from routine and compulsory checks of immigration status as a matter of legislative mandate.

The decision would not, as I read it, prevent police from checking immigration status in a particular case, but would prevent a statewide system to do so.

The result of the decision will be to have a chilling effect on law enforcement officers who, in the absense of the law, would have checked immigration status based on reasonable suspicion anyway. Enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona, as a result of the decision, will be even more difficult than prior to S.B. 1070.

The only portions of the law upheld were:

A.R.S. § 13-2929: creating a separate crime for a person in violation of a criminal offense to transport or harbor an unlawfully present alien or encourage or induce an unlawfully present alien to come to or live in Arizona

and

A.R.S. § 28-3511: amending the provisions for the removal or impoundment of a vehicle to permit impoundment of vehicles used in the transporting or harboring of unlawfully present aliens

[Note to readers: The analysis above has been adjusted from the original as time permitted a more complete reading of the decision]

I just can’t stop myself…I feel like that kid in church that just loses it when his big brother does something goofy in the middle of the sermon…

So, if I have this right, what this “Judge” has just told us is that the time spent while we wait for Law Enforcement to “run” our licenses and plate numbers is time during which our liberties are being restricted. Please let me be the next white guy to get pulled over so I can tell a State Trooper he is not allowed to run my numbers because it would be a burden on me, and it would restrict my liberty…that right there is made of teh awesome…but wait! There’s more:

Gisela and Eduardo Diaz went to the Mexican consulate in Phoenix on Wednesday seeking advice because they were worried about what would happen to their 3-year-old granddaughter if they were pulled over by police and taken to a detention center.

“I knew the judge would say that part of the law was just not right,” said Diaz, a 50-year-old from Mexico City who came to Arizona on a since-expired tourist visa in 1989. “It’s the part we were worried about. This is a big relief for us.”e-expired tourist visa…hunh-nothing wrong with THAT now, is there?

You do the math there folks? Here since 1989 on a since-expired tourist visa…hunh-nothing wrong with THAT now, is there? And of course, Judge Bolton steps in it even deeper by suggesting:

“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new (law),” Bolton ruled. She added that a requirement of the law that police determine the immigration status of all arrested people will prompt legal immigrants to be “swept up by this requirement.”

Just how will we wrongfully arrest legal aliens? Never mind; I’m running out of popcorn.

Don’t miss the hilarious sideshow via the LA Times about Union thugs and pro-Federal-law-violation-by-non-Americans activists…caravaning to AZ to protest the law that never made it to the streets of AZ because of this so-called federal Judge.

Check the calendars folks, and wait for the date to be published for the appeals process…I take cash and credit cards… I BET the appeals will be delayed until that magical and mysterious date of November 3, 2010…a day AFTER all those illegal votes can be cast to keep Democrats in office for two MORE years of doing nothing about the problem they created in the first place.